I woke up (No! I mean really woke up, like after you go to sleep) and thought of the cancellations that I would have to make today. My calendar had several items that I needed to cancel. I had several products on my Alexa shopping list that I had to cancel. I had to cancel a meeting with a friend. My day starts off with one cancel after another.
It seems that I cannot go through life anymore without having to cancel something. Everywhere I look there are cancel buttons. My microwave has a cancel button on it. My cellphone bids me to cancel numerous phone calls that are not in my contact list. My oven wants me to cancel after I am done roasting the chicken. My computer invites me to accept or cancel a software download. My former business partner texts me once again to cancel a meeting that we had scheduled. My wife comes in to cancel something we had talked about doing tonight.
I am surrounded, inundated, besieged by cancel requests. The Republican lamebrains such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz repeatedly scream “cancel culture, cancel culture, cancel culture!” I have not witnessed as much animosity towards a phenomenon since the zeitgeist of Political Correctness (PC).
You may remember a few years ago, the concept of PC first appeared. Its emergence seemed to be a response to certain people who felt denigrated by titles or language used in American culture. For instance, African Americans did not like to be called niggers. Feminist women resented being called frigid bitchs. LGBTQ people resented being called fags, dykes, freaks, and homos. Undocumented immigrants resented being called illegal aliens. And of course, devout Muslims resented being called Islamo terrorists. The people who felt that their right to insult, abuse and demean others had been challenged, quickly coined the term PC to label efforts that might better have been labeled as “cultural civility and sensitivity.”
The same people (I would give you ten to one odds) are now appalled at the fact that some Americans want to silence their insults. This desire to silence hostile and often lying rhetoric has given rise to the term “Cancel Culture.” Basically, those who believe that we are living in a “Cancel Culture” feel that the rest of us have no right to truth, honesty, and dignity. They of course have the right to say or do any preposterous thing they want to and the rest of us are expected to accept it. Let me give you a few examples:
- Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene screams that the recent vaccination push Is more like Jim Crow–Era segregation than the Holocaust. Before it was more like the Holocaust. She flips flops easily.
- Representative Jim Jordan yells that “The wave of cancel culture spreading the nation is a fundamental threat to free speech rights in the United States.” He insists that the “Cancel Culture” silenced Trump’s lies by denying Trump access to Twitter and Facebook. Jordan pushes the “Stolen Election” lie in which he swears that Biden did not win the election. Jordan will swear to anything if it defends Trump.
I could go on and on with hundreds of examples of “Cancel Culture”, but I think it is obvious that something as Sherlock Holmes said is “afoot.” My personal theory is that Republicans have discovered how powerful euphemisms can be as a tool to ridicule the opposition. Nasty labels, pejorative names, insulting sobriquets have become all the rage in the Republican Party. When you add the political stunts, clown shows and imbecilic performance acts that Republicans now use routinely, you have every reason to wonder what is going to become of American Democracy. Two examples illustrate Republican circus acts:
- Jim Inhofe throws a snowball on the Senate floor in an effort to disprove what he sees as alarmist conclusions about man-made climate change.
- Republican Lauren Boebert declares that “I will carry my firearm in DC and in Congress,” she says in a video, which has been viewed over two million times.
The Republicans will counter that the Democrats also pull political stunts such as the recent effort by Democrats in Texas to block a voter suppression bill by leaving the State Senate and flying off to Washington, D.C. However, there was a purpose to this move by the Democrats which was to deny the Republicans the quorum they needed to pass a bill designed to destroy what little is left of our democracy.
In looking at the examples of Inhofe and Boebert above, it is clear that these stunts are done for their own aggrandizement. The single purpose of most of the theatrics done by Republicans today tend to be to deny reality or to push agendas that do not serve the overall good of the nation. The Republican Party has become a party of clowns and Madison Avenue shysters.
If there is a historical reckoning (assuming the human race survives), it will look back on this era in American politics as the beginning of the death of democracy in America. We will not be the first country where democracy was tried and subsequently succumbed to the forces of authoritarianism and fanaticism.
Go to go now. If I say too much, some stalwart Republican lawyer may try to sue me. Of course, that would not count as “Cancel Culture.”
I look around me today and I do not understand the world. I do not understand the decisions that our leaders make. It seems we have a moral disease. The symptoms of this disease are short-term thinking and greed. Arizona is suffering from an unprecedented drought and heat wave. The water levels in both the Central Arizona Project and aquifers are dangerously low. Yet when asked to cut back water usage by 3.8 percent, the golf course owners in Phoenix created an association to oppose such a “drastic” cut. Their counter proposal was for a 1.6 percent cut in water usage. The Governor of Arizona was the keynote speaker for the associations kick off meeting. Am I crazy? Do you believe this? Are golf courses more important than drinking water and water for farm crops?
A Rabbi, Iman, Pastor and Buddhist Priest were all discussing the issue of peace in the world and in particular peace in the Mideast. The Rabbi said there could only be peace in the Mideast if all the Muslims left. The Iman said that there could only be peace if all the Jews left. The Pastor jumped into the argument and said there would only be peace if all the non-Christians left. The Buddhist cleared his throat to interrupt the argument and said, “There will never be peace anywhere as long as there are Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Catholics and even Buddhists in the world.” 
The peaceful person does not use violence against others. The peaceful person is a diplomat who solves problems with his/her brain and not with tools of aggression. The peaceful person is confident because they have integrity. The peaceful person has serenity because they have no fear. Fear is the enemy of peace. When the world is on red-alert, people live in fear. People become fearful of others and fearful of living. Racism, sexism, discrimination, greed, and militarism create fear. With fear, no one can be at peace. 
We should all be grateful for peace. This means we need to appreciate peace and understand that it cannot be taken for granted. Peace is up to us to create. It is too important to leave to religious leaders and politicians. If we want peace in our lives and peace in the world, we must create it. There can never be peace for anyone if there is not peace for everyone. 
Ladies and Gentlemen. How can you have a government of the people, by the people and for the people when it is a government of the rich by the rich and for the rich? A government of lawyers, political science majors and corporate people. An interlocking network of proponents who have a self-interest that nowhere matches the nature and interests of the general public of America. 
Many of the board members in the rural counties are farmers or laborers or educators who have little or no training in the laws that they are sworn to protect. Thus, they rely heavily on the lawyers that they hire to provide advice and perceived protection from lawsuits. This renders the board members subject to the legal opinion of the lawyer which is quite often at odds to what the public wants. The boards are frequently fearful of a lawsuit (often offered by the lawyer as a possibility) and will forego making an informed decision based on evidence that is presented at the hearings. 
We need less lawyers. Lawyers and lawsuits are destroying America and Democracy. We need leaders with more diversity in education. We need leaders with more ethnic diversity. We need leaders with more gender diversity. We need greater representation that reflects the demographics of America. We need less lawyers. We need more justice and we need more fairness. 
Twenty-three years later, when Douglass gave his speech, the turmoil in the United States over the issue of slavery was growing. It had always been a major source of dissension in the United States, but things were coming to a boiling point. The Dred Scott decision had recently been rendered by the US Supreme Court. This decision held that black people were not citizens and that slaves could not sue for freedom. In March of 1857, James Buchanan was sworn in as the 15th President of the USA. Buchanan was no friend of the abolitionists and he joined the Southern leaders in attempting to admit Kansas as a slave state. He strongly supported the Dred Scott decision and today he would be considered an ardent racist. The contrast between Lincoln who was elected four years later and Buchanan in terms of their policies towards slavery was the final straw that led to the Civil War.
Today we are witnessing a descent into tyranny and demagoguery the likes of which have never before been seen in America. We have a President who lies whenever he speaks. We have a Republican party that abhors social justice and will do everything they can to suppress the rights of Americans to vote. We have a base of supporters for Trump that are racist, fascist, and anti-democratic. Lured by whatever sirens they listen to; they support the right of Trump to do whatever he wants to do. They call him their Messiah and voice unconditional support for his attacks on the press, minorities, immigrants, women, blacks, Latinos, disabled, foreign countries and even the disabled. A President who is willing to sacrifice thousands of lives to support his quest for a second term.
Aging Capriciously 